Grant sits on a chaise that acts more like a narrow bench under his oversized body, and examines his wife’s trophies as she begins her address. That frilled skull up there. Is it so kind of recreation, or has the vast firmant grown dinosaurs with golden skeletons sowhere?
“Company of the ZKZ Black Pike. Your Princess wishes you a good morning. I hope the half-duty tenday was as enjoyable and rewarding for you as it was for . In its wake, our sector directive has resud in earnest: to maintain our Empress’s dominion, to explore and expand her commonwealth’s frontier, and to stand stalwart in defense of her subjects. We are the mirror that reflects the light of Taiikar to the very edge of the firmant. And today that light shines on Rax.”
Grant sees the painting hung between two antique axes. A stern, unsmiling Taiikari woman, her chest festooned with dals and necklaces, her head covered by a cupola-shaped crown that makes his neck hurt just looking at it. Could that be Sykora’s Empress?
Your Empress, too, Grantyde.
He wonders how much his wife believes in what she’s saying. Is that painting high up because she wants it out of the way, or is it crowning her collection as a place of honor?
“Corvettes bearing the colors of the Yellow Cot pirate clan have been sighted on the periphery of the Rax tributary lane,” Sykora continues. “We are inbound to deliver them and their bastard Queen a tily reminder that the Empress rewards her servants with her bulwark. It’s my strong suspicion that our entire task will be to appear, flash our cannons, watch them turn tail, and then decamp for Rax on so fabulous shore leave. I intend to introduce my husband to the sabsum terrace baths. But should I be wrong, and should we see action, I have the utmost confidence in this vessel and its crew to deliver the unfiltered wrath of the Empire onto these squalid outlaws. Make ready for firmant drop and carry forth my faith in you. Glory to the Black Pike and Glory to the Empress.”
A pause. Then Batty’s voice calls to him, free of its steely command, light and sweet and affectionate. “You can co out now, dear.”
He erges from the gallery. “Nice address, baby.”
“Thank you, Grantyde. I’m so out of practice. I nearly tripped over the bulwark bit.” She hops off her seat, and he’s reminded by a beautiful sky-blue vista that she’s still naked from the waist down. “I swear I won’t banish you like that next ti,” she says, as she pulls a pair of breeches from her wardrobe. “Just had to think fast thanks to the hickles.”
“Hickies.”
“Right.” She steps into her boots. “Next ti, you’re welco to sit by or behind or whatever you like. And look smouldering and dapper.”
Grant smiles, but there’s a niggling queasy concern behind it. He thinks about keeping it to himself—but this is his wife, and he thinks he’s falling in love with her, and if he can’t talk to her about this, then he needs to reevaluate a lot of things in his future. “A lot of Empress talk this ti. You’re a fan, huh?”
“A fan.” She shoots him an amused look as she zips her other boot on and sits back at the vanity. “You could call that. I’m just going to do a quick lip.”
“What would you call yourself?”
“A servant,” she says. “Her will made manifest on the frontier. The Empress is the entire reason any of us are here. The reason the Pike was built, and I was commissioned, and ultimately the reason we found one another. I owe her everything. A life in her service is small recompense.”
“I see.”
She looks at him in the mirror. Her head tilts. “My answer perturbs you, Grantyde.”
He purses his lips and nods.
“It’s all right, darling.” She stands and takes his hand. “You’ve never had an Empress, and your experience with her Empire has been… subpar, so far. I won’t begrudge you your shaky feelings.”
He shrugs. “Like I told you earlier. Maekyonites and absolute rulers have a complicated history. We’d gotten rid of most of ours when you picked up.”
“I’ll just have to prove to you that her servants have the right of it. By example. I’m sure I sound like so brainwashed moppet to you right now, but give ti and I’ll give you ti, too. And know that every little bit of my fealty that doesn’t belong to her—” she kisses his jaw “—belongs to you.”
Who would you choose, then? Who’s winning? or your Empress? He will not ask her that. But he’s wondering it. “I’m… having so trouble figuring out how you can revere her and be so willing to hide this thing we have from her.”
Sykora sighs. “I’ve been bracing for this conversation. I have my answer, but it’s going to sound like an excuse.”
“I’ll take it anyway.”
“Empress Zithra XIX holds singular dominion over half a trillion souls, Grantyde. There are so many edge cases and exceptions that to codify all of them would be a sheer nightmare. And so it is given to Void Princesses the power to… interpret.” She rubs his chin. “If she knew you, she’d understand, and she’d agree. I am simply doing what I firmly believe she’d do if given the chance and the context.”
Grant wishes he believed her more than he does. “Do you think she ever might? Do you think there might be a way to change this?”
“I do.” And the look on her face tells him she’s dedicated sleepless hours of thought to this. “It’s not exactly as easy to turn the damn thing around as an interceptor would be. Such a colossus’s controls are best, ah… nudged.”
He fidgets with his uniform. He tries to believe her. He rembers what Ajax told him: your wife wouldn’t suffer the shortsightedness of a zealot on her crew.
Maybe she can tell she’s losing him on this, because she changes tack. “It was only half a century ago that compelling an unwilling Taiikari was entirely legal, and anticomps were only worn by our military n. And now it’s one of our severest cris, and you can buy a pair of goggles at the supermarket. Zithra did that, the mont she took the throne. Her reign has been my whole life, and I count myself infinitely blessed for that. Taiikar is in a golden age under her, bounding forward in territory and technology and permissiveness. The Empress has the unique power to recognize you and your fellow husbands-of-the-void as citizens. And I’ll make sure she will.”
He grins. “So we’ll just make you Empress and you’ll add husbands-of-the-void to the no-compelling list.”
She does not grin. “Let’s not joke about that, please, darling. Suggesting that a Void Princess might ever beco Empress is… not good.”
“It won’t happen again,” he says. For a while, anyway. “What do you propose, then?”
“Simple.” She opens her makeup drawer and makes her selection. “I’ll make the Black Pike sector the most halcyon and magnificent sector on the frontier. I’ll be the lodestone that every other Void Princess looks to. The pri example.”
She pooches her lips out to paint them.
“And when it cos ti for Empress Zithra XIX to formally recognize —either with an Imperial visit or an Imperial invitation, I’m not picky—” she smacks her lips in the mirror to spread the makeup. “I will tell her: your Imperial Highness, this is my husband Grantyde of the Black Pike, my most stalwart companion and the love of my life, who has inspired and kept faith in , who has been indispensable as I’ve done this great honor in your na, and at every step he has been a free man. And I will ask her to recognize it formally.” She turns to him. “And she’ll see your worth, and the tradition will be abolished, and you and all the other husbands-of-the-void will be citizens.”
“Just like that?”
The look she gives him is steadfast and full of unyielding hope. “Just like that.”
“And will we keep hiding the part where I can’t be compelled?”
She furrows her brow. “I haven’t decided about that part. That bit’s under construction, still. Might be best to keep it under wraps. I’d be willing to talk about this more later, darling, but we need to shake a leg. We have to get to the deck before we’re out of the sweep, and you haven’t washed your face yet.”
“Why do I need to wash—”
She leaps onto him, bowling him back a few steps before he steadies himself and holds her up. She launches an amorous assault on his face, kissing him with sloppy, feverish abandon for the better part of a minute.
She points at the vanity, still in his arms. He is sared with a dazzle-camouflage pattern of indigo lipstick. “Wash your face,” she says. She levers his arms open and drops lightly onto the ground, tail-first to slow her montum. “And I need to reapply this. Busy, busy.”
He laughs with his wife and goes to the sink and if he doesn’t manage to get all of it off, at least he’s a shade closer to Taiikari blue like this. He’s sure that anyone looking closely will be charitable enough to forgive their Princess and Prince Consort.
Sykora leads Grant from the cabin, shouldering on her topcoat and adjusting her tricorne to cover her increasingly common horns.
Grant takes one last look at the painted Empress, distant, frowning, and gilded in gold, before he follows her out.
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